Dear Jaan Letter

By the way, how DO you say "love" in Farsi? Sometimes I don't think a word exists. But a lot of Iranians singles would love to know. So that's the question. That's amore.

If I can't find a heterosexual relationship to be a part of, perhaps I'll hop into a bisexual love triangle. I'm a straight shooter, but I get hit on by gay guys all the time - probably more so than by women it seems, unfortunately. It's my whole androgynous "artist" look like David Bowie's Ziggy Stardoost character. But hey, they're all just categories. Humans, ultimately, are experimental creatures who will do whatever it takes to fill the voids in our hearts.

Sometimes I wish I was gay if only for the chance of "coming out" seems so profoundly cathartic to me. I've always found that public admission as the easiest, most profound, no-further-questions-asked way to get the message across that you are who you are for a reason. That you're just naughty by nature, not by choice. Whimsical, not "weird." It would quell all the "een pesar cherah ajeeb gharibeh?" talk I heard growing up A dool identity is a crippling burden to deal with going into adulthood, and at one point you have to decide you cannot live a lie anymore.

That could be why Farrokh Bulsara aka Freddie Mercury never officially declared himself out, despite the obvious. The Queen singer was of Parsi parentage in conservative Zanzibar. Parsis are Zoroastrians in India whose ancestry stretches into ancient Persia, so I guess Farrokh had a Persian bloodline when he found HIV in it. As an adult, I took that test last year for the first time and it was uncomfortable to say the least.

Such pressures don't seem to hamper Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend, now that he's out and about. He comes from one of this rare Iranian familes who actually encouraged him to pursue his eccentric, artistic lifestyle. That's in large part thanks to his mother, who already had her own public persona raising her sons in DC (and having a last name like a DC comic superhero).

Nevertheless, with that confession Batmangalij surely shattered the hearts of a few fangirls. But that's the risk we must sometimes take in order to exist openly and honestly in this crazy little thing called life.